I have been listening to Mozart recordings quite a bit in the past few days. All symphonies from his "middle period" -- starting with no. 30, up to 35. I've enjoyed the performances although they're quite different.I agree with Rick. There is a "horse-race" tendency in musicians today, and not just in Mozart. Bach's violin concertos are case in point. Performers compensate for this flight from the piece in different ways. Rick observes the brash accents; I notice a "prettification" of the music.
Charles Mackerras and the Prague Chamber Orchestra: Mackerras was going through his horse-race period, no doubt influenced by the so-called "authentic" performance style. Most tempos way too fast, brash accents ... but Mackerras was a genius, and the rowdiness was tempered by a sensitivity to melody and phrasing. (He later got over that style, and some of his last recordings were of Mozart with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, wonderful readings.)
Colin Davis and the Staatskapelle Dresden: From the '70s but in typically excellent Decca sound. I cannot praise these recordings highly enough. Davis saw the light and imparted his vision to the fine orchestra in the city that was a smoking ruin only 30 years earlier.
Rick
One of the things I was trained in as a choir performer and while studying piano, is how not to gallop off - it is apparently a natural tendency. It is not simply a matter of giving each note its due, but of controlling our internal rhythm, so we don't allow it to accelerate while singing or playing a piece of music. I think that there are also those with natural musical ability for whom this reining-in is easier. Not every-one can be a musician.
Here is perhaps my favorite piece of music: Bach's violin concerto in A minor, and specifically the first movement. There are performances where the movement is played too fast, bolting aggressively off into some far horizon.
Isaac Stern, in the video below, does it full justice, giving it a delicate grandeur. I love the stretches of yearning by the violin solo.
Bach violin concerto in A minor, First Movement, given an Allegro or an Allegro Assai tempo
Isaac Stern & the English Chamber Orchestra
Probably a composer who can be played in this "horse-race" manner is Vivaldi.
I wrote here about a choral concert by a "Korean-American" concert choir I attended in New York. One thing that struck me was the accelerated speed at which the choir (and the soloists) sang.
This seems to be a contemporary phenomenon. I don't think it is simply a display of virtuoso. I think people are bored with the music, and they don't spend the required time to play the notes, but rather gallop on to finish the pieces. Sitting and listening (like sitting and reading) requires a certain patience, a certain ability to leave the galloping world alone for a while. The world now is full of gallopers, from the fast car highways to the instant connections on the internet highway. Speech (conversation) is also becoming more jumbled and faster, as though people cannot string together words fast enough. So if the audience is based on the galloping type, I suppose the orchestra is also of the same ilk, not just because they want to deliver what they audience wants, but because they really are in tune (in the same wave length) as the modern concert-goer. Speed, expediency (the psychologists have a term for it - Attention Deficit Disorder) is part of contemporary man's make-up.
I also think this is why the Korean choral group performed in the manner it did. It is not "in tune" with Western music, so its interpretation is to get through - virtuoso manner - the musical piece. I wrote about this same lack of sensitivity in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, an Asian-dominated orchestra group, in the same blog post Asians Playing Western Music.
I wrote in the post:
As the [choral] concert progressed, I began to realize a certain "prettiness" in the performance, a lack of force, drive and even drama. I don't think this is simply a cultural phenomenon (as in misunderstanding the Messiah's content, message, meaning, etc...). I think it is a physio/cerebral problem. I've seen it happen in art and design, and even in science... At some level, I think Asians demonstrate some ability (i.e. memorization, or fast, scale-like exercises). But there seems to be an inability to create a synthesized beauty, which is what much of art (and order in Science) is about.Perhaps this galloping-off by white members of orchestra and other musical ensembles is also influenced by this multicultural environment, where the deep study of the Western music is being overshadowed by other things like audience appeasement, and non-white (and specifically East Asian) dominance in classical music.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat